Hi there. Welcome to another Friday Findings video. Today I thought I would show you how
to use a tool that I've found to be a lot of fun and it really helps you to make your
jewelry quite unique. And this is a quite simple little gadget, it's
called the Coiling Gizmo. And it consists of a "U" shaped bar of metal with holes through
it and for each of those holes there's a different size mandrel with a handle on it.
So this one would go through the smaller holes and this one would go through the bigger holes.
I have this screwed to a block of wood because normally when I use it I have this block of wood clamped
to my workbench. And then the only other tools you need to
use it are some nylon jaw pliers for straightening your wire and some flush cut wire cutters.
So the way this works is you cut yourself a piece of wire, and it's very important that
your wire doesn't have any kinks or your coil won't be even. Just on the end of this handle, you're
just going to make one or two loops with your wire.
There will be a little bit of wasted wire at the beginning as you make your coils.
And then you slide your mandrel through and bring your wire towards you. And what I like
to do is hold that wire right up against, since I'm right handed I'm going to turn the
handle with my right hand and I'm going to hold the wire with my left, so I'm going to
use my left thumb to press that wire right up against that bar just under the mandrel.
And the first few wraps won't be great and then you'll see you start getting this really
nice consistent coil. And that's really all there is to it.
You can make it as long as you want. And coil and coil and coil and coil.
Do be careful as you're coming down to the end of your wire because the end can be sharp,
so don't let it fling up. Just let that little end of wire be waste as well, cuz it can cut
you as it goes past your thumb. And there you have it, a perfect coil of wire.
Now what can you do with this? Well first of all we'll cut it off the mandrel.
And remember if you're using sterling silver wire or copper wire or any kind of metal that
can be recycled to save it. All those little scraps do add up.
So here's our coil. There are a number of things we can do with it. You can cut it into lengths
that have the same number of coils in each and that way you could use them as spacers
in your beads. You could cut this apart into jump rings.
And there's a jump ring. And there's lots of tools, there's a saw that you can use that
will saw through a coil and cut a whole bunch of jump rings.
If you're going to make jump rings I recommend you use at least half hard if not hard wire.
Dead soft isn't a good idea cuz it won't hold your jewelry together well.
There's a few other things you can do with coils.
Here's a bracelet I made and this is the loop of a clasp and all I did is I ran a wire through
my coil, and then used the end of the wire to make a loop and the other end made a little
decorative spiral. And here's the loop of a toggle clasp.
So anything that you shape you could actually slide a coil onto it and make an even more
interesting shape. Another thing that you can do with your coils,
(this bracelet I'm wearing today) is again put a wire through a coil and then I've shown
you how to make caged wire beads, well this cage is made the same way except that the
wire is covered with a coil. And then I gave this a patina.
One of my favorite uses for coils is to make coiled coil beads.
Let me show you how to do that. So here you can see I've gone ahead and coiled
about a three inch length of 26 gauge wire on the smaller, the 2mm, mandrel. And now
I'm going to take my 20 gauge wire and slide a length that's several inches longer on both
ends. Slide that right through the coil. And then I'm going to wrap this on my bigger
mandrel. And I'm going to first wrap a couple, like two or three nice tight wraps and that's
kind of like the end of your coiled bead. And then I'll slide my coil on since it fell off.
And now you just proceed the same way that you did and it'll grab
and start coiling that coil. Isn't that the coolest thing? I just kinda love it.
It looks like I could have cut my wire a little bit longer. Yeah, you do need a little bit
more of the wire that goes through the coil than you might think. Just let me show on
these what you want is two or three wraps on each end.
And that just secures everything in place. And then you can just snip the wire and then
to string these I just strung a wire through, made a loop on each end and treated it like
a bead. So I hope this gave you a few ideas for ways you
can make your own beads and components using a coiling gizmo.
Thanks for watching KeepsakeCrafts' videos. If you like this video please be sure to click
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where I have lots more creative ideas and inspiration. Happy creating. Bye bye.